Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

George Smiley has been retired for about a year when he finds a friend from the circus, his old outfit in British Intelligence sitting in his living room. He is taken to the home of an advisor to the Prime Minister on intelligence matters where he finds evidence that one of the men in the senior ranks of his old agency is a Russian spy. Smiley is asked to find him, without official access to any of the files in the Circus or letting on that anyone is under suspicion. With only a few old friends, his own powers of deduction, and secrecy as...
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George Smiley has been retired for about a year when he finds a friend from the circus, his old outfit in British Intelligence sitting in his living room. He is taken to the home of an advisor to the Prime Minister on intelligence matters where he finds evidence that one of the men in the senior ranks of his old agency is a Russian spy. Smiley is asked to find him, without official access to any of the files in the Circus or letting on that anyone is under suspicion. With only a few old friends, his own powers of deduction, and secrecy as weapons, Smiley must unearth the spy who turned him out of the Circus.

From Paris, Ricky Tarr sends a message to the Circus saying he has information vital to the future of the Service. As planned, it flushes out the mole who meets his Russian contact Polyakov at the London safe house used for the Witchcraft exchanges. Under arrest, the mole has little to say and so George Smiley is asked to intervene. The mole is to be exchanged with the Russians for British prisoners and George is appalled at the level of security he sees around the traitor. His concerns prove justified.
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George Smiley continues his round of interviews this time meeting part-time agent and journalist, Jerry Westerby. Jerry had contacted Smiley after the Testify fiasco as he had an important piece of information for him. George was out of the Service by then and ignored the letter. Jerry's information confirms that Testify was a set-up. George now takes a gamble and takes one of Percy Alleline's senior men into his confidence. With his investigation now complete, it's to lay a trap and Ricky Tarr is sent to Paris.
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George Smiley calls on San Collins, ex-circus spy, who was the duty officer the night Jim Prideaux was shot. He confirms the events as George understands them and that Prideaux's good friend Bill Hayden is the senior officer who took charge of the case after all hell broke loose. George subsequently meets with Prideaux to get a firsthand account of what happened during the disastrous Operation Testify in Czechoslovakia. Prideaux confirms that it was a disaster from the start and was under surveillance almost immediately from the time he arrived. While under arrest, his interrogators knew as much about the operation as he did, including the meaning of "Tinker, Tailor".
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At George's request, Peter Guillam goes to the Circus archives to steal the file on Operation Testify. Before he can get out of the building he's called into a meeting with Percy Alleline and several other senior officers. He's accused of hobnobbing with Ricky Tarr. George tells Guillam of his one and only encounter long ago with Soviet spymaster Karla, the man now controlling the mole inside the circus. In reviewing the information, he concludes there is a direct connection between Source Merlin and the mole Gerald. He's also convinced there is a clear connection to the outcomes of Operation Testify and Jim Prideaux.
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George Smiley sets himself up in a cheap hotel and begins to review the files that are available to him. At the Circus, Peter Guillam surreptitiously checks the duty officer's log book and finds that pages have been removed for the night Jim Prideaux was shot in Czechoslovakia. George travels to Oxford to meet with Connie Sachs, former head of research and learns of her suspicion that the Soviet Cultural Attaché in London was really a spy, thereby confirming part of Ricky Tarr's story. George Smiley recalls the period about a year ago when various factions of the Circus were at each other throat. Percy Alleline had presented Control with an intelligence report from a new source which he has dubbed Merlin. The information he has provided is called Witchcraft. It's clear that Percy is out for Control's job and makes it very clear that there are others like himself who are not satisfied with the current state of affairs and are looking for change. At Control's request, Smiley met individually with three of the senior officers officers: Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland, but made little headway. George needs the file for Operation Testify, the disastrous operation in which Jim Prideaux was captured behind the Iron Curtain and Peter Guillam agrees to retrieve it for him.
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At the home of Sir Oliver Lacon, George Smiley listens to Ricky Tarr's story. He was dispatched to Lisbon a year ago when the local resident, Thufty Thessinger, requested assistance. A Russian trade delegation is in town and one member, Boris, is stepping out on his own at night to bars and restaurants. Ricky soon realizes Boris is a trained agent and as per standing orders, doesn't approach him. He decides to check his hotel room and there meets Boris' wife Irina. They are soon having an affair and she eventually tells him a great secret: there is a Russian agent, a mole, buried deep in the British secret service. George had similar concerns before his forced retirement and now Lacon asks him to investigate.
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The head of the British Secret Service, known as Control, believes there is a Russian mole in the senior ranks of the Circus, as the spy agency is known. He's received an offer from a Czech general to provide him with that individual's name and sends one of his senior field agents, Jim Prideaux, to collect the information. Control has five suspects and uses the Tinker Tailer nursery rhyme as code names for each of the suspects. The mission does not go well. Six months later, retired spy George Smiley is asked to listen to a story, one that may have great significance for the future of the spy service.
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